#idle

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#idleness #pathetic #dreams

Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron. ↗

— Ezra Cornell

#human mind #idleness #iron #like #mind

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#grievous #idleness #needless #springs #toil

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#doing #doing good #exert #giving #good

It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt. ↗

— William J. Clinton

#deep #enforced #gnawing #heartbreaking #idleness

To me, thoughts are fun and art is fun. The strength of our society should not be idle entertainments but the joy of pursuing ideas. ↗

— Philip Kaufman

#entertainments #fun #ideas #idle #joy

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments. ↗

— Frank B. Kellogg

#armaments #back #building #competing #contrary

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency. ↗

— Eamon de Valera

#cannot #idleness #inefficiency #waste #we cannot

In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule. ↗

— Robert Welch

#american republic #constitution #deliberate #division #emphatic

But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids. He was neither pleased nor displeased when there was work to do; it was all the same. He could lie all afternoon with his eyes open, staring at the corrugations in the roof-iron and the tracings of rust; his mind would not wander, he would see nothing but the iron, the lines would not transform themselves into pattern or fantasy; he was himself, lying in his own house, the rust was merely rust, all that was moving was time, bearing him onward in its flow. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#time #freedom